Read No Quarter (NOLA's Own #2) for Free Online Page A

would be dead. I don’t think it would’ve mattered if we’d told Mom. She drank all the time by then. We weren’t the perfect family.”
    Silently bawling my eyes out, I glanced at Alys and Lili, and I saw they were, too. A slick oily feeling coated my heart and lungs, making me feel ill on Sheri’s behalf.
    This is what she feels all the time—this strange sense that she’s not right, that she’s diseased and corrupt in some way.
    “I was eleven the first time he came in my mouth. He sat my brother down at the end of the bed and made him watch. I’d given him blow jobs before but nothing like what he had done that night. Mom was passed out, drunk, and he’d taken me and my brother into my room and locked the door.” She shuddered.
    Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lili gag. Alys pressed Lili’s glass of iced tea into her hand.
    “Then, he made the two of us strip, and I had to give my brother a blow job, too. He was crying the whole time, but he was so scared. He just did what Dad told him to…and after that, Dad made him do it to me.”
    “I think I’m going to be sick,” Lili whispered, placing her glass back on the table.
    She reached for my hand, and I tightly squeezed her fingers. I thought I just might be sick, too.
    “After that, he’d make us do this almost nightly. He kept telling us we needed to have as much practice as possible if we were going to know what to do when we grew up. It always started out with me giving him head. Then, he would watch us. He wouldn’t let us stop until we both…my shrink said that was his way of ensuring that we enjoyed it just enough to make us feel that maybe it wasn’t so bad or to make us feel guilty about enjoying it, so we’d be too ashamed to tell anyone.
    “When I was thirteen, I started my period, and he made my mom put me on birth control. She didn’t even question him. She just took me to the gynecologist. I should have realized then what that meant.”
    Alys covered her mouth with a shaking hand. “Oh, no… Sheri …” she whimpered.
    “One month to the day of being on the pill, Dad brought my brother into my room and made him watch as my dad raped me the first time. I think he tried to be as gentle as possible, but that was because after, he wanted my brother to do the same. My dad stole my virginity, and my brother lost his inside me.” Her throat worked furiously around the lump that threatened to choke her words.
    One thing I clearly understood was, her brother’s virginity was something precious to her, more so even than her own. As she’d described it as him losing it inside her…there was something powerful in her meaning.
    Lili’s hand was going to crush my fingers.
    “Almost every night after dinner, when my mom was passed out, drunk, he’d march us up to my room. He’d fuck me first, and then my brother would fuck me. We started anticipating it, and our love wires crossed—that’s what my shrink told me. We hated our dad, but we loved each other, and the fact that we did made it bearable when he was there, telling us what to do.
    “We knew it wasn’t right, but after a while, my brother would sneak into my room at night, and it was weird because it was okay. We were both victims of that monster. He had created us. My brother…he would make love to me, not the freaky fuckery my father would force us to perform. He would hold me and cry and tell me he loved me, that it was the only way he knew how to anymore. I don’t think he could imagine having sex with anyone else because at least I was just as fucked up in the head as he was—more so, considering what my own father would do to me. As far as I know, Dad never did anything like that to my brother. But…my brother wanted me to be happy, and…” She swallowed hard. “I don’t know exactly when it started, but I liked it. I loved him . He was so strong for the both of us, and the damage had already been done…” She closed her eyes, and tears leaked out from